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Lorraine Bracco: Role Model

She was in treatment for depression when she got the part of psychiatrist to a Mafia boss on The Sopranos. Her positive experience gave millions of viewers a realistic idea of what goes on in a therapist’s office. In real life, she urges others to get help.

By Elizabeth Forbes

She’s not a psychoanalyst—she just plays one on TV.

As Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO’s hit series The Sopranos, actress Lorraine Bracco presented a cool, collected character quite different from her own “freewheeling and free-speaking” personality. But Bracco and her alter ego do share a few things in common.

For one thing, Melfi’s hint of a Brooklyn accent comes straight from Bracco’s childhood. The wire-rimmed glasses that Melfi wears were Bracco’s own in real life. And Melfi’s realistic sessions with fictional Mob boss Tony Soprano, who comes to her office because of panic attacks, reflect Bracco’s personal experiences in therapy.

Bracco sought help from a psychiatrist in 1997, shortly before she saw the script for The Sopranos pilot episode. It had taken a while for the actress to accept that something was seriously wrong, since she didn’t experience dramatic symptoms. She has described her lethargy and loss of motivation as a “gloom of pea soup” that gradually numbed her to emotions like joy, optimism and engagement with life. She recalls that getting through the day, even just walking the dogs, became empty drudgery.

Bracco had always been a go-getter, pursuing a modeling career in Paris at 19 and appearing in several French films. She ended a brief marriage, which produced daughter Margaux, to return to New York City with actor Harvey Keitel and study at the city’s famous drama studios. She and Keitel had a daughter, Stella, in 1985.

She soon relaunched her acting career, making a name for herself in American movies and TV shows. Her growing reputation got a huge boost from her Oscar-nominated performance as Mafia wife Karen Hill in the 1990 movie Goodfellas. Then things began to fall apart.

In 1991, Bracco broke off her tumultuous relationship with Keitel and turned to the debonair Edward James Olmos. Soon afterward, Olmos became embroiled in a distressing scandal and Keitel sued for custody of his daughter.

The bruising custody battle dragged on for a decade, draining Bracco’s dwindling coffers as her career stalled. Along the way, Stella got sick with no-one knew what. Bracco’s 1994 marriage to Olmos ran into troubled waters.

As the pea-soup fog thickened, Bracco reluctantly visited a psychiatrist. She was diagnosed with clinical depression and began several years of treatment with psychotherapy and antidepressants.

Bracco says starting talk therapy piqued her interest in the Dr. Melfi role—and won her the part. Committed to making Dr. Melfi’s sessions as true-to-life as possible, she insisted The Sopranos present an ongoing process where honesty and emotional intimacy grow week by week. Or as she says, “It’s not in that first 45 minutes, guys. It takes time to develop.”

(The nude statues of women in Dr. Melfi’s office were another of Bracco’s contributions. She says she wanted the sculptures to reflect Melfi as a strong woman celebrating women.)

Bracco found an ally in David Chase, the show’s creator and head writer, who had also had a good experience with therapy. Bracco credits Chase and colleague Robin Green with creating “brilliantly written” scenes for Dr. Melfi. Thanks to the script’s realistic depiction of what happens in therapy and Bracco’s ability to invest her character with sympathetic strength, the show and the actress were honored by the American Psychoanalytic Association in 2001.

Bracco talks about how helpful it was during her recovery to work with Chase and others who were open about benefiting from medication and therapy. She initially resisted the idea of medication for herself, afraid it would dull her mind and affect her acting, but in the end antidepressants broke the gloom’s hold and got her back to her passionate, positive self.

Bracco put her passion into telling others not to be afraid to get help. She has spread her message in interviews and speaking engagements, and shared her story in her 2006 memoir On the Couch.

Bracco, who just turned 57, continues to speak out. She appeared at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting this year as a guest in the American Psychiatric Foundation’s Conversations series. Here are some of her comments from that onstage interview, edited for clarity and length.

Lorraine Bracco on:

Getting the role of Dr. Jennifer Melfi

[Bracco was originally approached about playing Tony Soprano’s wife, Carmela, on The Sopranos.] I felt like I had played that Mafia wife role in Goodfellas. And I had been in therapy. So when I read the script, Dr. Jennifer Melfi kind of just jumped up at me. I said, “Oh, I could play her. I could definitely steal from my psychiatrist and make this role work.”

So I met David (Chase) and said I don’t want to play Carmela—which my agents were furious with me for—and I said I really would like to play the role of Jennifer Melfi. And we kind of confided in each other that we had both been in therapy. We talked about all of the good things that had happened to the both of us in therapy. And I really believe I kind of convinced him to give me the role.

The onset of her depression

I’d been in a terrible custody battle for Margaux and Stella. Also, Stella developed rheumatoid arthritis, which took the doctors a while to figure out. I wasn’t really working a lot at the time. I had to declare bankruptcy. And, of course, everybody says, “Well, with those three factors going on, how could you not have been depressed?” And I said, “You know, it’s really funny. It’s not then that I was depressed.”

It was after, when everything was really good … everything was going right for me, and why was I not thrilled?

A friend of mine who’s a social worker said to me, “Lorraine, I think you should talk to someone. I think maybe you need medication.” And I would be like, “I am fine. I am going to yoga my way out of this. I’m going to go to vacation with my friend in California. My life is going to be okay. Don’t worry about me.”

Deciding to seek help

One day I just looked at myself in the mirror, you know, washing my face, brushing my teeth. And I said, “I look dead. My eyes are dead. My face is dead. I have no joy.” … I’m really a woman who always saw that glass half-full. I never saw it half-empty. And I realized I just wasn’t happy. I was miserable. I had no desire to do anything. You know, I putzed around in my pajamas a lot.

I realized days and days and weeks and months have gone by, and I should be on top of the world.… There are millions of people that are suffering just like I was, who think they’re strong and they didn’t need help, and they’re going to yoga their way out of it. They’re going to do all of those things that we think we can do to feel better tomorrow or the next week.

“Everything will be better next week,” I kept saying. “Next week.” Well, a year into that, I really had to say, “What am I doing with my life?” And also, I had two lovely children who deserved so much more than what I had to give them at that time.

Starting medication

When I finally went to [a psychiatrist] I said, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not happy. Everything is working out and yet I’m miserable, and I don’t understand that.” And he turned around and said, “Yes, you’re clinically depressed.” And I was like, “I am? How could that be?”

And he said, “I’m going to put you on some medication. And I was like, “Oh, are you kidding me?” I thought [the medication] was going to put me in a lobotomy state. But it’s just to show you, I was ignorant and had misconceptions and stigma of what mental illness is all about.

And I have to tell you, it was the smartest thing I ever did for myself. It changed my life. The four-billion-ton gorilla was off my back in a couple of weeks. And I really started to take charge of my life, of me.

Staying with psychotherapy

[My first psychiatrist] was older, and he gave up his practice. So I said, “Oh, I’m going to try a woman.” I’m a woman. I’m going to hit menopause soon. I was a single mom. I had a couple of relationships that didn’t work. And I thought it would be good to have a woman to talk to. So when I got to create Dr. Melfi, I always said I had the yin and the yang of both of them.

I think I had a lot of things that I needed to understand [through talk therapy]. Why I picked the wrong men. Why I made the choices I did. It’s also difficult to deal with fame, success … that I was worthy of that and that I deserved to be successful, and I worked very hard in my life to accomplish things.

The comfort of “touch up” therapy

I went back [after Stella left for college] because I felt something wasn’t right. I was walking around the house, and I was waiting. I realized I was waiting for Stella to come home. So I had gone back to [my psychiatrist] and we talked about being now an empty nester. And that what I was feeling was normal.

And both my parents passed in November [2010], 10 days apart. I spent the last year with them caring for them. Again, I called up and went back [to therapy] a bit. I said, “You know, I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to go through this. I don’t want to watch my parents be sick and be ill.”

And so I’ve been very aware that I don’t want to fall into a vortex and really, with talking to her, I’m allowed to grieve, I’m allowed to have sorrow, and all of those things are okay and healthy.

Life imitating art

I have a lot of people who come to me and want to talk to me about their problems. And I have to say, “I’m only a TV doctor.”

There were not one or ten. I’m talking about hundreds of people over the years of Sopranos. I mean, I’d be at a Yankee game and somebody would tap on my shoulder. “Could I talk to you for a minute? … My wife is on the phone. She’s really depressed. Would you say hi to her?” I mean, so many people who were just embarrassed and felt that I had a face that they could talk to. I was the face of the psychiatrist … which is one of the reasons why I really felt that I could talk about depression.

Deciding to speak out

I said, “There are hundreds of people who talk to me. Imagine how many people are suffering alone.” It’s not like you break a leg and you go to the doctor, or the dentist with a broken tooth. It’s a very lonely disease. People still do not want to talk about it, to come out and say, “You know, [stuff] happens.”

There are so many people suffering from this disease, and they just don’t want to get help. They don’t know how to get help. They’re embarrassed to get help. They don’t want to tell their children, their wife, their husband, their parents that they have a mental illness.

I think millions of people suffer alone with this disease. And that was the thing that really broke my heart, when I saw how readily fixable it is. The pharmacology and the talk therapy for me … just even the pharmacology was amazing. I was stunned at how much better I felt about everything, you know, weeks into it.

Taking responsibility for change

I do a lot of work with shelters for battered women. And they feel that’s what they deserve, to be beaten up because the eggs weren’t made right or the pants weren’t pressed correctly. I spend a lot of time with these women and say, “That’s not true.”

And when I go in I say, “You want your kid to grow up like you? Because that’s the only thing they know is what they see. So if you don’t change, they’re going to have your life.” And so it’s breaking that cycle of not believing that they’re worth anything.

Again, you know, medication, talk therapy, I don’t want people to be afraid of that. It’s like a toothache. It’s like a broken leg. It’s all—it’s changeable.

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HEALTHY HABITS

Most of us don’t default to healthy habits. It takes planning and effort, and sometimes a surge of self-discipline, to eat right, exercise, get the sleep we need, and stay on top of work and life tasks. Establishing new habits, let alone purging bad ones, can require major effort, especially if we are also struggling with depression or anxiety. What are some good habits that you've formed and how did you build them?